• Paul is the most powerful human personality in the history of the Church
• He was a missionary, theologian, and religious genius
• His letters laid the foundations on which later Christian theology was built

  
Paul is the most powerful human personality in the history of the Church. A missionary, theologian, and religious genius, in his epistles he laid the foundations on which later Christian theology was built.

In his highly original introduction to Paul's life and thought, E. P. Sanders, whose research on Paul has substantially influenced recent scholarship, pays equal attention to Paul's fundamental convictions and the sometimes convoluted ways in which they were worked out.